Thursday, September 15, 2011

GPS in the head? Rhythmic activity of neurons to code position in space: The research scientists showed that cells in the entorhinal cortex, which is important for spatial navigation, oscillate with individual frequencies. These frequencies depend on the position of the cells within the entorhinal cortex. "Up to now people believed that the frequency is modulated by the interaction with neurons in other brain regions", says Yoshida. "However, our data indicate that this may not be the case. The frequency could be fixed for each cell. We may need new models to describe the contribution of rhythmic activity to spatial navigation."